Since it was discovered that Enron was hiding debt off their balance sheet to make their earnings, stock and stock options go up, Wall Street has decided they can’t get enough of this neat trick and every quarter we see more of it.

It’s peek-a-boo accounting where debts are removed from the balance sheet during the period when disclosure is needed (for quarterly earnings reports) and than the debt is temporarily parked back onto the company’s balance sheet, or parked on another bank’s balance sheet with an implied reciprocal agreement. (Enron had hundreds of shell companies that served as ‘debt parking lots’ to avoid having to include any liabilities on their quarterly earnings statement).

Lehman Brothers looks like they are trying to out-Enron Enron in the peek-a-boo accounting department.

here’s ron paul (once again proven right by this current crisis) breaking down how the fed causes bubbles like our current housing bubble. side note: us govt stopped tracking money supply in 2006.

great graphs of how the american banking industry was slaughtered this year. $1 trillion lost, which roughly equal to the amount of new money printed by the govemment over last few years. to me this is a scary relationship – print tons of money, which then gets lost on stupid loans? waaay easier to lend money when you have a feeling you won’t have to pay it back….